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Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Why the "Paradox of Tolerance" Is No Excuse for Attacking Free Speech

Rather good thinking here. Our problem is not tolerance, but the intolerance of certain groups we have allowed into our communities.

Popper is also invoked. I have recently read one of his works and appreciate his stance. It is a strong reminder that conservative and liberal actually represent the mainstream of political thinking, but neither embrace violence at all. This actually makes clear that it is their duty to suppress it and that most certainly includes violent Islam.

Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance has gotten a lot of attention
lately. With good reason: We Americans are wondering what to do with the
neo-Nazis among us. Maybe we’d like to tolerate intolerant views, but isn’t that risky?

Popper spoke to that fear when he wrote:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If
we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we
are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of
the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with
them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we
should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long
as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by
public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should
claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may
easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of
rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid
their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is
deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists
or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the
right not to tolerate the intolerant.

But this passage – in a footnote to volume 1 of The Open Society and Its Enemies – isn’t his clearest, and it’s been grossly abused by both the far left and the far right.

Self-Righteous Thuggery

The far right reads it and says: “See? Even tolerance itself is intolerant! So let’s persecute whomever we please. Unlike so-called ‘tolerant’ people, we’re not being hypocrites!”

And by this thin, almost imperceptible difference, they imagine themselves the moral superiors.

This though is a gross misreading of Popper. The liberal society that
defends itself in the face of deadly violence is in no way comparable
to the groups that would destroy it.

For illiberal groups, violence is the first resort.

That’s because to preserve itself, a liberal society first
tries things like rational thought, open debate, voting, and a system of
laws that allow even odious beliefs to be explored and held without
fear of persecution. Liberals reach for violence only as a last resort,
if ever, and only when the preferable methods have failed. We use
violence only rarely and only defensively, with the aim of returning to a
more civilized mode of existence as soon as we possibly can.

For illiberal groups, violence is not the last resort. It is the
first resort, or nearly so. Popper’s paradox notwithstanding, there is a
world of moral difference here.

I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the
utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by
rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression
would certainly be unwise.

This is no warrant here for laws against hate speech. On the contrary, Popper appears to have called such laws “unwise.”

To Popper, intolerance is not to be deployed when the
utterance of intolerant ideas might make you uncomfortable, or when
those ideas seem impolite, or when they get you really mad. Intolerance –
if that’s the right word for it – is only warranted when we are already
facing “fists and pistols,” or, presumably, worse.

It is to become akin to our enemies, at least in our choice of methods.

We know this not merely from a close reading of the passages I’ve quoted, but from a look at The Open Society and Its Enemies more
broadly. The entire book is an exposition of intolerant ideas, a
dissection of them, and a sustained, reasoned defense of pluralism. Here
Popper proved himself liberal; his first resort was to make a rational
argument. It was only in a footnote that he considered the possibility
of using violence, and he did so with obvious disdain.

No Liberal Excuse for Illiberalism

Liberals must resolve always to prefer reason and argument to
violence. To deviate from this principle is to invert the moral
preference hierarchy that gives liberalism its superiority in the first
place. It is to become akin to our enemies, at least in our choice of
methods. To do so is to concede to the far right its charge of
hypocrisy.

To make him a friend of hate speech laws, or worse, of persecution, is to distort his thought beyond recognition.

Now, occasionally reaching for intolerant methods, that is, reaching
for self-defense in the face of a threat to the liberal order, may mean
the renunciation of a kind of philosophical consistency. It is far from
clear, however, that this is so damning to Popper’s way of thinking.
Elsewhere in the same work Popper argued that all forms of
sovereignty entail inconsistency, and liberal sovereignty no less than
any other. He held this to be the result of a deep confusion in the
history of political thought, one that wrongly made the state the
ordering principle of our social life. His paradox of tolerance aimed to
support this claim.

My anarchist friends may find themselves nodding in agreement here. I
don’t think that they would be wrong, even while Popper was no
anarchist: He hoped, rather, for a liberal society in which the state
had a limited and auxiliary role, not a directing one. Understood
correctly, Popper is an ally neither of the far right nor of the far
left, but of classical liberals like F. A. Hayek. To make him a friend
of hate speech laws, or worse, of persecution, is to distort his thought
beyond recognition.

How useful is the paradox of tolerance? In practice, an effective
defense of a tolerant society is almost always straightforwardly
compatible with the practice tolerance itself. The paradox only rarely
arises. Still, in a few extreme cases, and if we use a tendentious
definition of the word “intolerance” – one that defines self-defense as
intolerance – then yes, tolerance and intolerance may have a superficial
resemblance. But it’s possible to make too much of that, and many
people certainly have.

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Gadget

About Me

18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.